Marcus Colasurdo

Marcus Colasurdo is the author of eleven books, including the underground classic novel, Angel City Taxi. Over the years, he has worked as a bartender, boom microphone operator, waiter, taxicab driver, factory worker, Job Corps counselor, farmworker, journalist, laborer, teacher and more. His explorations have taken him across the length and breadth of the U.S., a significant part of it achieved through the lost art of hitchhiking. As a writer for the page and stage, Mr. Colasurdo is the founder of Gimme Shelter Productions, a nonprofit organization of artists whose performances benefit homeless shelters, feeding programs, and other worthy causes. More recently, Mr. Colasurdo helped found Soul Kitchens in Baltimore, MD, and Hazelton, PA, which provide free meals to those who need them with the goal of culinary panache and deep-rooted nourishment for all. He hails from the anthracite coal country of Pennsylvania.

Heart X-rays is a twenty-first-century beat epic poem that ranges across landscapes and voices, with appearances by Banksy, Pussy Riot, hip-hop, the down and out, the up and coming, heartbreak and joybreak, while exploring the mystery we call the human heart.

If indeed poetry can offer an RX, a prescription to the bloody joyful teary-eyed American paradox, it is one that calls forth all the voices that have not yet been heard, that harbors an innocence that reaches into the very heart of our own excellence. A collaborative work between two poets and working-class activists, Heart X-rays is a poetic memory of today written in the alphabet of a future.

Praise:

“Marcus Colasurdo has been both an artist and an activist worth following for years. It is with absolute excitement that I look to see nature and humanity in its raw and wildly beautiful aspect in his new work. Marcus is a modern-day spiritual humanist Walt Whitman with a beatnik’s eye for the beauty in darkness.” —Carla Christopher, poet laureate emeritus of York, PA

“G.H. Mosson is a unique nature poet as well as antiwar beacon and poetry activist.” —Antler, author of Factory and poet laureate emeritus of Milwaukee, WI

“One way we understand poetry is by what is left with us—an aftermath—I cannot get these poems out of my mind.” —Grace Cavalieri, host of The Poet and the Poem on Questions of Fire by G.H. Mosson

“Marcus Colasurdo’s organization of socially conscious artists is well known for their collective benefit performances, raising funds and awareness for organizations that work with poor, needy, incarcerated, and homeless folks. The energy that Marcus inspires through his singular vision of art and community service is unlike anything I’ve witnessed before or since.” —Betty Schulz, Healthcare for the Homeless

“The effect is that the anthology ends as a kind of manifesto, a call to arms for its readers and for societies the world over, to remember history, know not to retrace its tumultuous, bloody path, and create a better present and future.” —Lines & Stars Journal on Poems Against War by G.H. Mosson